The Bottineau pioneer. (Bottineau, N.D.) 1885-1895, 1887-04-21
SOUTH AFRICAN DIAMOND.FIELDH.
The Romantic Story OF Their Rise
and Development.

slAc AOHlaHCIC story OF Ine1r hlSe
and Development.
The story of the rise and develop
Ment OF the south African diamond.
fields is, in its way, scarcely less pic
turesque than the romantic history of
the discovery of gold in California and
Australia, O of that wild tale of the
rise Of the silver city on the f1snks of a
bleak mountain in Nevada. In 1852
nobody suspected the existence of dia,
monds in the country now known to be
SO '>diamondiferous,' to use the bar
barous adjective coined Try the colo
nists. OF gold they were aware, and
there were bright dreams of the wealth
which lay in copper and the gay planes
plucked from ostrich tails. No doubt
they have since then heard that on an
old map, dated 1850, the photographer
had written "Here be diamonds
There are also vague traditions of the
Katir having employed shining pebbles
to boretholes in other stones; but it is
certain that until a certain Schalk van
.Niekerk saw the children 'of Farmer
Jacobs playing with a bit of'''rock crys-
tall which instinct told him was too
bright and too heavy to be applied to
such frivolous purposes. nobody
thought much of the legend. Ho W
ever when the Jacobs cfystrl sold for
E5OO there w~as-except MI. Gregory's
remarkable essay in The Geological
Mayazine-no more scepticism on the
subject. "A ''rush'' ensued to the
banks of the Vaal river, and there for
's1early two years some very fair finds
were made by the adventures who
elected to grub among dirt. in the
hope of coming upon such gems
:as the .28Ss carat stone which his
tory has associated with the name oil
Mr.. Stewart. Barkly was the capital Of
this district. But in 1871, under the
root of an old thorn tree on the now
famous sKolesberg Kopje, or Mount
Kimberley, as it was then called after
the then secretary of the colonois, was
found a stone, which soon transferred
the diamond-diggers from the Vaal to
the New Rush. De Beors, Du Toits
Pan, and Bultfontein, which aver since
have continued the centers of this lu-
~crative branch of commerce. The New
Rush is now a tolably old one, or,
rather, a the mines are all worked by
companies and capitalists, it is no lon
ger,a crush" at all. 1t is the present
: city of Kimberley, and out of the
''pans'' and ''pipes' of the gabbo-rock
on which it was built something like
two and q half millions of gems are
yearly exhumed. The Jacobs, the
Duvenhages, the Bendizenhouts, and
the Niekerks-names once familiar to
the early 'adventurers-are now an
aehronlsms. They would scarcely re-
cognize their early homes. The four
original mines have become extensive
townships. while Voornizigt, a farm
which forty years ago could have been
bought for a shilling an acre, vas sold
to the colonial government for 91O0.-
600. though it was only a small portion
of the original Bulfontoin. AS for the
latter spot, as it contains the township
of Beaconsfield and half the town of
Kimberley, it cannot complain; while
Dorstfontein comprises the mine and
town of Du Toits Pan and has, more
over, the satisfaction of being in close
proximity to the suburban district of
Belgravia, where most Of the profess
sional men and the aristocracy of the
buyers of diamonds and dealers in dry
goods have their smart villas. -London
Standard.